CPI: What Lies Beneath

By

mark gongloff The Wall Street Journal Online

Updated Feb. 23, 2005 12:47 p.m. ET

After days of scary inflation news, an apparently benign reading of U.S. consumer price inflation was a welcome relief to financial markets. But economists, as is their wont, still found reasons to worry.

The consumer price index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' closely watched measure of consumer price inflation, rose just 0.1% in January, after being flat in December. Coming after recent reports of higher prices for wholesale goods and imported consumer goods, along with worries about a falling dollar, financial markets...